★ Announcing: Our First Road Trip

I’ve always considered myself a person who is very adventurous but lately, I’ve been sitting still (geographically speaking) and have only explored the web and business. It’s time for a vacation and recently the constant workload has gotten me a little down and burned out. Every year since I was 15, I would spend Spring Break in the woods camping and away from all technology (even a cell phone) and this has been the longest I’ve gone without that escape and I desperately need it. In April, a PR firm contacted me about test driving a Ford vehicle and they asked what kind of car I would prefer and I specifically said, “the most cutting edge and technologically advanced car you have.” They responded and it blew me away! Laura and I are going to embark on an adventure worthy of The Internet.

Ford Motor Company came back and offered a few days with a 2010 Lincoln MKS. The MKS is a full-size luxury sedan from Lincoln (A Division of Ford Motor Company). I’m not a car guy but during my research on this model, I became VERY EXCITED to have the chance to drive this vehicle extensively and explore all of the cutting edge features. I encourage you to read about the Lincoln MKS on the links below.

• Lincoln.com MKS Homepage
• Wikipedia.org Lincoln MKS
• Jalopnik discusses Ford’s new EcoBoost System in the MKS

Here are the most notable features that I’m extremely excited about:

• EcoBoost which delivers the power of a V8 engine with the advantages of V6 fuel economy (read more)
• Active Park Assist which is a system that allows the car to self-park itself with the push of a button (read more)
• SYNC which is Microsoft’s system in many of this year’s Ford vehicles. It’s a futuristic control center for your MP3 Player with maps, directory assistant, SIRIUS and more. (read more)
• Collision Warning is a system that notifies you when you’re nearing a front end collision with a car in front of you. If you don’t respond, MKS hits the brakes for you to avoid collision (read more)

Additional Features that make this car an amazingly cool vehicle to drive:

• Virtual Key less keypad with buttons that only appear when touched in a certain place on the car
• Capless fuel filter so you never forget to screw the gas cap back on the car
• 6-Speaker THX II 600 Watt Sound System
• Dual Zone Climate Control & 12 way heated seats
• Automatic rain detecting wipers
• Automatic rear sun shield
• and about 40 other features that blow me away!

Where are we going to go? Great question. I created this map which is a general idea of where we’ll be going but half of the stops on our trip are optional and I have a feeling we’ll scrap a few of these in favor of being able to enjoy ourselves. Below is a map of my “like to do” map but all of this is unconfirmed.

This sounds like fun but how am I going to put some Adam Jackson flare on it? Well, everyone is being taken along for the ride! I’m going to cover the entire trip over at Adam and Laura Go West in the form of CONSTANT BLOG UPDATES and I’ve also created a special page that will let you follow every move that I make. if you prefer the old fashion way of links to each point of interest, here it is.

• AdamAndLauraGoWest.com (The Primary Aggregate for all of our adventures)
• Zannel.com/AdamJackson (Photos & Updates)
• Twitter.com/AdamJackson
• Twitter.com/LauraW
• Flickr.com/Photos/AdamJackson (Best of the best photos)
• TwitPic.com/Photos/AdamJackson (Random Photos)
• Justin.TV/AdamJacksonLive (Live Streaming from OUR CAR)
• YouTube.com/AdamJackson1984 (Daily Videos)
• FriendFeed.com/AdamJackson (Aggregation of every single update)
• 12Seconds.TV (Posting photo / audio updates)
• TweetMic.com (Allows me to post auto updates to Twitter view an easy to use 99 cent iPhone app)

That’s right, every day, we’ll have fantastic photos from our adventures posted instantly and we’ll be editing and posting the good photos on Flickr too. There will be instant streaming video using Justin.TV and higher quality videos posted to YouTube. Our Tweets, Zannels and TwitPics will keep a constant stream of info flowing and you can go to our blog to see blog posts around what we did that day.

Here is a taste of a few things we’ll be doing:

• Yosemite National Park
• Santa Cruz for Surfing
• Santa Monica for beach side dining
• Venice Beach for a BBQ with my So-Cal Friends
• Disneyland in Anaheim
• Hollywood for celebrity sightseeing
• Newport Beach & Laguna Beach because we’re fans of “The OC Show”
• San Diego cause I hear the zoo is AMAZING!
• Las Vegas for Cirque, Blue Man Group, Gambling, Sightseeing
• Also, Tiesto is playing at The Bellagio and he rarely comes to The US
• Skiing in Lake Tahoe
• Wine Tasting in Napa Valley
• Back to San Francisco

You’re probably asking yourself, “how in the hell are Adam and Laura going to do all of this in a few days? Well, that’s why 50% of this is optional and we’re not planning ANYTHING! I did book hotel rooms in Vegas but that’s it. When are we doing this? GOOD QUESTION!

Laura and I pickup the Lincoln MKS on Friday, May 22nd at 9AM. Actually, Ford is dropping it off at my apartment which is even cooler! We leave town ASAP and we don’t come back to town until Wednesday the 27th. Here’s my proposed schedule:

• 22nd: Drive through Yosemite OR Santa Cruz and take the scenic drive to Santa Monica
• 23rd: Disneyland, Hollywood and BBQ with Friends
• 23rd: (evening) Clubbing in downtown LA
• 24th: Newport Beach, San Diego Zoo, Laguna Beach
• 24th: (evening) Arrive in Las Vegas and check into New York, NY Hotel and see shows + gamble
• 25th: Check out of hotel and drive to the Hoover Damn. Rent an UZI and an AK-47 at The Gun Store
• 25th: (evening) Check into The Bellagio Hotel, see more shows, gamble more.
• 26th: Checkout of hotel and drive to Lake Tahoe and do some fun things in Reno Area
• 27th: Ski, snowboard and hang out on the mountains, Drive to Napa afterward for wine tasting.
• 27th: (evening) Return the car back to Ford.

My estimated mileage for these days: 2,000 Miles if we do all 80% of all of these activities.

I’d like to also add that I never take vacations so when I do take off I have to make it something that I can later add to my resume and I can’t just sit still. Laura is the same way so trust me when I say we’ll stay very busy. A perfect example of this is:

when Laura and I wanted to go to Six Flags in Atlanta, Georgia. We wanted to go on a Sunday so I got out of work Saturday night and we drove 7 hours from our Jacksonville apartment to Atlanta and arrived right before the park opened. We stayed until the park closed and drove 7 hours back home, arriving in Jacksonville at 4AM Monday morning. I had to be at work at 8AM. That’s just how Laura and I take vacations and it’s always worked well for us!

So, this is my plan and Ford is in love with this marketing idea. Basically, I take their most technologically equipped car out in the wild for a few days, travel across the west coast on their dime but in return I produce hours and hours of marketing not because I have to but because I REALLY WANT TO and I love what I do. I’m lucky to have been asked to do this and can’t wait to see what this car can do!

If you have any additional recommendations for our trip just paste them below in the comments and in the meantime, bookmark our blog for updates.